Hello,
This post is ment to help Devs. Please appraciate the test. You can by me a beer later.
I hope this post will help realize what is going on (since this is forum for Manjaro KDE and there isn’t any better place here on the forum) with KDE 6. I am not seaking help here, but merely put out the warning for useres and Manjaro devs. Things will break. Oh they will! So before putting Manjaro KDE based on qt6/KDE 6/gear 24.02 version out to the public, my sugesstion is… keep version 5.xxx as long as possbile.
So here are my findings (Arch…):
When you update to KDE 6 ($ pacman -Scc, $ pacman -Syyu) some libraries that have the “qt5” will not be updated to the “qt6” equivalents. For the functioning of the syststem they are required (even if you think that everything went smoothly…at first glance, you will soon discover they are missing). Of course Arch added “5” and new ones don’t have “6” prefix/suffix as the naming convention for the stable libraries is (no “6” prfix/suffix), but why did pacman not upgrade the necessary libraries - the “6” equivalent of “5”, I have no idea. So then the user has to hunt those missining libraries, because it looks like you have “a barebone” KDE 6. Majority of them went through and were updated to the newer “6” versions, but some were not at all.
Then we have 24.02 (or something like this) “qt6” applications (e.g. Dolphin). They’re the new “qt6” versions and rely on qt6 libraries. Then, why do I have “qt5” libraries left, that are now usless for those qt6 applications? (external ones? Strawberry has been qt6 for at least a year…,and they don’t use all those intertiwined libraries of qt5…). On top of it those (useless now) qt5 libraries are taking space and are … still updated when using pacman. Why? We switched to KDE6 and all apps (aka KDE gears) are now requireing qt6 libraries and qt5 libraries are useless for them. They don’t do a squat in KDE. Like a dummy library, because e.g. Dolphin, Elisa, Gwenview use qt6 equivalents, but not qt5 anymore. So why update them and keep them? This is not an upgrade. This is a “frankenstein/chimera” distro now.
There’s more. Some libraries of qt6 varieties have nasty bugs missing functionality from qt5 libraries. Did anyone test it? On top of it some KDE own libraries (for qt6) removed functioanlity and code because now this functionality is supported by Qt6 on its own. But some of those Qt6 libaries are not installed updated by doing pacman -Syyu. Oh my! Nor do they have removed functionality.
Easy to recognize by an example (maybe it will be more clear if I give you an example, you buy me a beer later):
Manjaro is Desktp, which is the most difficult. Everything should work and there are a lot of work to glue everything together. One common thing is that people play videos and browse/create photos. Simple right? Not on KDE 6:
By KISS and shared libraries everything should be smooth. You have kimageformats “5” you install it/upgrade to kimageformats “qt/6” and all should be as smooth as a butter. Are you sure? Are you? No! It will not work!
Even before we had a mess. And now its even worse: previously, for example, webp file formats were supported by kimageformats5. You update and… nope no support for webp. You check for kimageformats6 and… its there. You should file up a regression bug against kimageformats “qt6”, because “qt5” imageformats supported webp, right?
So after update (pacman -Syyu) you have no webp thumbnails in Dolphin and Gwenview cannot display those photos (webp). What will a typical user do? How they will know that they should installl qt6 library (qt6-imageformats). Why pacman did not install it? They will file a bug against kimageformats6. Not good. Not good at all!
But wait, there’s more. We also have webp-pixbuf-loader and kdegraphics-thumbnailers and, of course, libwep.
To summer up:
-kdesdk-thumbnailers
-kdegraphics-thumbnailers
-[ffmpegthumbs] → for vids
-qt6-imageformats
-kimageformats 6.0.0-2 (kf6)
-webp-pixbuf-loader
-varous libxxx (avif, webp, jxl, png, etc)
Why not one share library to rule them all (Dolphin, Gwenview, SDDM, Lock Screen, Elisa…)? Read on. Noting, that its not the above libraries…
But wait. PNGs thumbs are missing too in Dolphin. Long and behold, before you say that it works on your computer and Gwenview and Dolphin display PNG thumbnails OK and there is no issue, let me be clear: you are wrong. Only 8-bit thumbnails are displayed in Dolphin. If you have 12-bit or 16-bit PNGs (you should, 8-bit don’t compress properly, not enough bit-depth…) Dolphin will not display thumbnails. You can hunt the setting in Dolphin, but they don’t matter (…). Only 8-bit PNGs are supported in Dolphin. But wait: they can be displayed in Gwenview. And thumbnails (ctrl+shift+f and top left button) in Gwenview are also displeyd. So… this is the prove that Gwenview (qt6) is using different library and Dolphin (24.02/qt6) is using different library. [tallk about shared libraries]. And this is just PNG. Oh my!
But wait there’s more. Some AVIF files are not displayed. Dolphin cannot display AVIF thumbnails, despite all rellevant (hunted down after update) libraries being there and installed additionaly. (Note that all worked OK in qt5 an just doing $ pacman Syyu broke everything- no thumbs in Dolphin, no thumbs in Gwenview.
So now after update to KDE 6, we can no longer display a lot of photos of variuos types. Nor see their thumbnails. Total disaster. This is not a server. Its desktop…
Al off these are just a “visual examples” for updating to qt6/kde6, that everyone can check (what about other libraries? How about those “glitches/foibles” with kwallet vs WiFi…again…ehhh,…). So, so far we have:
-kdesdk-thumbnailers
-kdegraphics-thumbnailers
-[ffmpegthumbs] → for vids
-qt6-imageformats
-kimageformats 6.0.0-2 (kf6)
-webp-pixbuf-loader
-varous libxxx (avif, webp, jxl, png, etc)
And still no AVIF support (see attachments before you say “my AVIFs work and I have “thumbs” in Dolphin” …my own Avifs made from these PNGs whith “$ avifenc -c aom” don’t work in Dolphin!. No PNG support either (see attatchment).
To top it up different libraries are used for Gwenview and Dolphin (both are KDE and should work with thier own shared libraries…).
And there is more: on top of all of these we have some useless “dummy” libraries (qt5imagformats and the likes are still “hanging” in the system, but they are not used anymore, not to mention they got updated today]. What for?
And I do suspect that jpg is “natively” supported in Dolphin by its own.
On top of all these there is wayland. Well not so smooth as x11 (intel only). So i switched. Now we have floating panel (waisting pixels below, looks apple-ish but useless, what am I going to do with those pixels below the panel? Squeeze a window of “chrom” there to launch some “nice” javascript?).
There’s a qube. Nope pressing meta+c does nothing. No cube. Switching between desktop with cube, nope, no such thing- just the old, ugly slider.
Sorry. But don’t cry if you update. I was. And its enough. “sable”? As people frm jupiterbroadcasting say “horse-stable”.
Since You cannot uplaod files here and they will be converted, don’t get me that “it works on your computer” Here is your small AVIF file and PNG file: